Rishi Sunak’s D-Day gaffe is a gift to Reform

Good morning. In what is almost certain to be the defining moment of the general election campaign, Rishi Sunak has apologised after leaving the D-Day commemorations early to film a pre-recorded interview for ITV.

As a symbol of the various anxieties focus groups have about the prime minister, it could not be better. (Or if you are a Tory, worse.)

It is a gift to his opponents in general and to Reform in particular. Speaking of Reform, good news for readers who like it when this newsletter focuses on my mistakes: I think I might have made another, this time about the significance of Nigel Farage’s Reform party. Some more on that below. Let me know what you think and please do keep sending me pictures of the election literature you get through your letterboxes or see advertised to you on social media. It is endlessly helpful.

Comeback kid

As astute readers will know, I have long been a sceptic of the Reform party’s electoral pull. Although some pollsters have put the party on figures that are much better than the 12.6 per cent Farage’s first party, Ukip, got in 2015, Reform (previously named the Brexit Party) has persistently performed worse in subsequent elections than Ukip did between 2010 and 2015.

I don’t think my views were wrong at the time, but I do think that I let them excessively influence my thoughts on the impact of Farage deciding to jump back into British politics.

One group of people who have consistently agreed with my assessment that the polls are exaggerating the appeal of the Reform party are its inner circle and some of Farage’s closest allies. In my opinion, one big factor in Farage’s initial decision to stay out of the election was that Reform’s performance in May’s local elections was closer to the bottom end of the party’s polling, consistent with around 8 per cent of the vote, rather than nearer the eye-catching figures Reform has enjoyed from some pollsters.

So we should take Farage’s re-entry into British politics as a sign that he thinks something is up — that Reform will do better during this election than he expected — and that he can enjoy real success if he plays his cards right.

The sounds of distress and worry from the Conservative party are very real indeed. Lucy Fisher and Anna Gross have an excellent dispatch from the heart of the Tory machine, and every day I speak to a Conservative parliamentary candidate in dire spirits. A good gauge of how a party is actually faring is who it can get out to represent it in the media: when large chunks of a party’s front bench are unavailable, it is usually because those MPs would rather spend time shoring up their own seats than in television studios.

So in addition to the private grumbles about the state of the Conservative campaign machine and Farage’s decision to re-enter politics, we can add the very public sign that Tory ministers would rather be knocking on doors in their own constituencies than out on the airwaves.

Rishi Sunak’s error-strewn campaign seems tailor-made to boost Reform. The Conservative pledge I have heard the most about so far when I travel the country is Sunak’s national service pledge — younger voters think it is cruel while older ones think it is a cynical promise he has no intention of keeping. That drives younger voters to Labour and older ones to Reform.

I have seen some strange things in my time covering politics, but “a campaign targeting retired, culturally conservative voters whose prime minister skips the D-Day commemorations early, then having a successful end to his election campaign” would be among the strangest — and I don’t think it is likely to happen.

So I still think that Farage deciding to stand in this election is a symptom rather than a cause of how badly the Tory party is going to do at this election. But we should be clear that as symptoms go it is a very, very bad one indeed: one that on its own could mean that this election isn’t just a transfer of power from one of the UK’s two big parties to another, but a wider reconfiguration of the British party system.

Now try this

I had a lovely time at the Southbank Centre last night, listening to the Philharmonia play its final concert of the season. It was a very strong set of pieces: Liszt’s second Hungarian rhapsody followed by Shostakovich’s first cello concerto, before the Enigma Variations in the second half. Sol Gabetta, the soloist, was on superb form, and you can hear her play the same piece with the Munich Philharmonic in this excellent Sony Classical recording.

With the exception of The Dream of Gerontius, I always have time for Elgar, and I thought Santtu-Matias Rouvali’s take on the Enigma Variations was very strong. My favourite recording of that piece is by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Bernstein and recorded by DG, which you can listen to here.

All those pieces, as well as every other piece we recommend in this newsletter, can be found on our Spotify playlist — though I don’t recommend listening to it on shuffle, unless you want to have Nimrod immediately followed by Chvrches’ Never Say Die.

However you spend it, have a wonderful weekend.

Top stories today

• Off limits | The Labour manifesto will not overturn the controversial two-child benefits limit, despite Starmer himself pledging to scrap it as part of his leadership bid in 2020.

• I’m afraid there is no money | The SNP received no reportable cash donations in 2024, creating anxieties over its ability to hold on to Scotland while Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative donations flood in by the millions.

• Home sweet home | Today, Keir Starmer will propose a house-buying scheme in which the state will act as guarantor. The mortgage scheme will aim to help 80,000 people get on the housing ladder.

Below is the Financial Times’ live-updating UK poll-of-polls, which combines voting intention surveys published by major British pollsters. Visit the FT poll-tracker page to discover our methodology and explore polling data by demographic including age, gender, region and more.

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